While most of the philosophers of the Wolffian school were busy writing grandiose compendiums of philosophical disciplines, Knutzen, the teacher of Immanuel Kant, was satisfied with more succinct treatment of individual problems. For instance, Philosophische Abhandlung von der immateriellen Natur der Seele (a translation from Knutzen’s Latin original) treats the nature of human soul. In fact, it is a defense of the immateriality of latter, against materialists, who would state that soul is nothing else but a material thing.
Knutzen’s work divides into two parts, first of which positively argues that soul is immaterial, while the second criticises the materialistic arguments against the immateriality of the soul. While the first part of the treatise is not that original, it is at least a good summary of the usual Wolffian argument for the immateriality of the soul.
The starting point of Knutzen’s argument is the simple experience that we are conscious or aware of things. This what is conscious of things is then called soul, without first any indication whether soul is material or immaterial. Now, one thing soul can be conscious of is the soul itself. An important condition for this self-consciousness is the ability to distinguish oneself from other things - this ability is something we’ll see even Fichte emphasising as an important part of human self-consciousness.
Next question Knutzen makes concerns the conditions of the capacity to make distinctions. Firstly, he notes that the soul must have representations of several things, secondly, these various representations must belong to the same subject, and finally, the representations must be compared by this same subject. In other words, soul, as the subject of these various acts, must form an absolute unity - a sort of focus, from which all these “rays of action” start. In particular, the soul cannot be a mere unified complex of parts, Knutzen says, which wouldn’t really be an absolute, but only accidental unity.
Knutzen’s proof is then almost complete. What he still requires is to show that matter is no absolute unity. This he can do easily, because matter was defined to be a complex substance consisting of many parts, which were also substances. To make things even clearer, Knutzen asks us to consider, in a Condillacian manner, a statue that would think itself. Part of such a statue might represent one part of the statue and another part would represent another part. Yet, such a combination of representations would be no unified representation of the whole statue. At most, one or more indivisible parts of the statue might think of the whole statue and at the same time of themselves, but such an indivisible part - a monad - would then not be a complex substance nor material.
The second, bit more original part of Knutzen’s book is dedicated to showing faults in arguments purporting to show materiality of soul. Furthermore, Knutzen considers the question why people endorse materialism. He comes up with two answers. Firstly, he suggests that materialists are often unable to understand anything beyond what they sense and thus unable to fathom the existence of something that cannot be sensed, such as an immaterial soul. Secondly, he insinuates that many materialists just wish to discredit the idea of immortality, so they wouldn’t have to worry any retribution of their sins.
Knutzen considers seven different arguments for material nature of soul:
1) A clear reason for a materialist understanding of soul is that body appears to determine soul in many ways: for instance, bodily weaknesses and old age hinder thinking. Knutzen notes that these facts could also be explained by suggesting that soul uses body as an instrument when thinking something - when the instrument is somehow flawed, like when the body ages, thinking becomes difficult for soul. If an old person would suddenly get a new, young body, its ability to think would be increased.
2) Knutzen has rejected the first argument of materialists, because he thinks causal interaction between soul and a body is at least as good an explanation for certain facts that could be explained materialistically. Now, another argument for materialism starts particularly from this supposed interaction between soul and body - all causality requires substances touching each other, which makes sense only when these substances are material. Knutzen is able to quickly deal with this argument, because there is no clear reason why all causality would happen through direct contact, and indeed, Newtonian account of gravity appeared to show that even material substances could affect one another through long distances. In the end, Knutzen notes, there is no need to assume that an instrument would have the same essence as its user, just like a violin is very different from a violin player.
3) Yet another argument for materialism starts from similarities in the behaviour of parents and their children, which could be explained if souls were produced from the souls of their parents. Knutzen notes that just because soul of a particular parent and a particular child are similar, other children in the same family might bear no resemblance to their parents. In any case, the similarities in behaviour might be attributed to the similarities of instruments used by souls, that is, bodies.
4) Another materialistic argument begins from the natural assumption that soul appears to undergo changes - while we are conscious of this now, we will be conscious of another thing later. If we then assume that all changes are based on motion, then soul would have to be a movable thing and therefore material. Like with an earlier argument, Knutzen can simply deny that all changes require motion - indeed, it is quite conceivable that even some material changes, like when colour of an object changes, might not need motions.
5) Locke famously noted that while matter as such appears to have no capacity to think - as shown by material substances that do not think - God with his omnipotence would surely be capable of giving the matter a power to think, which would make the assumption of immaterial soul superfluous. Knutzen’s answer is that the idea of thinking matter is a complete contradiction, thus, even God could not make matter think, no matter how omnipotent he is.
6) It is a pity that most German philosophers of the time considered animals only in brief snippets, leaving their status in the world system quite unclear. Still, many philosophers had noted that animals did have souls, but their souls differed crucially from human souls - while humans could think, animals probably didn’t. Knutzen notes that materialists might insist that animal souls can think and that they are material, which would suggest that same things could be said about human souls. While it would be easy to deny that animals think, Knutzen does not do this, but admits that animals might have this capacity. Yet, he at once points out that animal souls cannot then be material.
7) The last straw of the materialists is to insist they can explain all phenomena of human consciousness materialistically, so that no supposition of immaterial substances is required. Knutzen goes very far in describing the current theories about nerve fluids etc. Yet, he finally notes, there seems to be no clear connection between thinking and movements of nerve fluids.
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